I was called by QA Consulting after they saw my CV on a graduate jobs website, with an opportunity to become an IT consultant after a period of 12 weeks (unpaid) training and a 2 year commitment to the company. I was clearly told from the offset that if I left the company before the two years were up I would be charged some £12,000 to compensate for the cost of training. I passed the online test and phone interview and attended the assessment day in person. The assessment day itself was pretty good - a presentation followed by a test in Python and then group exercises in the afternoon. For Python I was pointed towards a comprehensive online course in the language as preparation but all that was needed was a very basic understanding of data types, variables, if statements, and while loops. Candidates were welcome to go above and beyond if they had the applicable knowledge of Python, but because this opportunity will be a lot of people's first experience with Python or programming in general, just the basics of those four topics are fine. Like a lot of people I saw the negative reviews the company gets on this site and so went in skeptical, particularly after my recruiter told me in the phone interview that only approximately a third of graduate consultants stay with QA Consulting once the two years are up. I brought these reviews up in the interview, as well as asked what terms result in people being dropped from the company and landed with a £12,000 training bill, and my interviewer told me that he was not comfortable with providing a solid, on-the-record answer. In my interviewer's defense his job was not related to what's in the contract and whether someone is kept on, however I gather the company are quite aware of the negative reviews on this site and still provided an interviewer who could not address them. Overall, I came away from the day without enough trust in the company based on these reviews. I doubt that they are nearly as bad as some people on this site say, as everyone at every stage of the process was very friendly and accommodating and their high-end clients speak for themselves, but when it's £12,000 on the line it wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

Assessment day comprising of a team based task and interview. The team based task was to create a product, with a presentation and a demo prototype (in our case a website). The interview was both a personality and a technical.